also, another issue I'd recommend from the first series is "Retrospect." It was Annual 3, written by Peter David, easily one of his best stories he's ever written. I dont want to spoil anything though, for people who have discovered these classic comics through the CD

Yeah, I thought "Retrospect" was head and shoulders above anything else in the first DC series; the reasons being the space David had to tell the story and the freedom he had (it contained almost no action).

At the time the series first came out, I didn't pick it up, having felt burned by Marvel's Star Trek comic a few years earlier. My feelings at the time were that the art wasn't any better and that the original characters they'd introduced were uninteresting.

What made DC's first run better than Marvel's had a lot to do (again) with freedom and space. I think by that time, the standard comic length had increased by 5 pages, and DC was able to reference episodes from the TV series as much as they wanted, unlike Marvel. So the DC run had much more intriguing plots, although the dialog wasn't much better. At that time, comic book scripters were still obliged to end every statement with an exclamation point - the only exceptions being if they wanted to use multiple exclamation points!!!

I think that rule had evaporated by the time Peter David came on board. I thought the quality shot up with his arrival, although his work on the 2nd DC series is superior, IMO.